Episode Details
Back to EpisodesBreaking Tasks Down And Timing Tasks
Description
This week’s question is all about breaking tasks down into manageable chunks and how to organise your academic studies.
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Episode 281 | Script
Hello and welcome to episode 281 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.
An area I find most people struggle with is breaking bigger tasks down into manageable chunks. How do you determine something like “write report on Quarter 1 Marketing campaign” when you may not know where to start? While it might be clear what needs to be done, it may not be clear how long something like this would take.
In many ways this comes about because we are not prioritising correctly. If your number one task for the day is to complete a report, or write a paper for your professor, why would an email or message become more important. You have no idea what or how many emails and messages you will get each day, you only know you will get some, but email and messages can never be your priority for the day. They don’t move things forward for you. They might help other people, but if your number one priority is the report, why change your plan?
Anyway, before we go any further, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast voice for this week’s question.
This week’s question comes from Meghan. Meghan asks, Hi Carl, thank you for your recent podcasts on core work. One area I struggle with is knowing how long a task will take. Should I be allocating time for each task or just doing what I can. Additionally, how would a Ph.D student define their core work?
Thank you Meghan for your question.
Let me begin with the second part of your question first. What is the core work of a Ph.D student?
This is going to relate to your chosen topic. What are you studying? The vast majority of your work here is going to be researching, taking notes and perhaps conducting studies. This is primarily likely to involve a lot of reading. So how much reading do you feel you need to do each week?
This needs time allocating